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Will Subaru Become the Next Toyota?

Last week a friend on Facebook shared a post from Toyota that compared the new 86 sports car to the classic 2000GT.

The comparison inspired a heated conversation, with most people arguing that the 86 is a cheap RWD sports car designed for proper weight distribution and mass production, while the classic 2000GT is an ultra-rare Jaguar-esque stunner.

Sitting next to the 2000GT, the 86 looked, in the band Train’s words, like “a crappy purple Scion.”

Then someone else said, “If Subaru made one, gave it AWD, and upped the power, I’d make it my daily driver.”

Subaru is on a 7-year sales march, with each year breaking the previous year’s record. The company certainly seems immune to sagging industry sales, and is in fact working on a new BRZ sports car. But is it the car everyone wants?

Nope. Rather than outfitting the BRZ with more power and AWD, Subaru took a more subtle approach. Road & Track said,

Five years after it was released, Subaru’s STI division finally got its hands on the rear-wheel drive BRZ, but it hasn’t built the car the internet wants. Nope, this isn’t a BRZ STI with a turbocharged engine. Instead the BRZ tS is a BRZ with its chassis honed for even better handling.

The new version does have some upgrades, including a massive adjustable carbon fiber rear wing along with new dampers, coil springs, and engine braces. The improvements will be enough to enhance the track experience, but will disappoint the people hoping for a BRZ on par with the WRX STI.

That’s a small group of people, though. The vast majority of folks are enamored with Subaru and continue to propel it to unparalleled sales successes.

2012 marked the first year with more than 300,000 sales. A year later, Subaru topped the 400K marker. Two years after that, Subaru sold more than 600,000 new vehicles for the first time.

Assume continuation of the brand’s 9-percent growth rate achieved through 2017’s first five months, plus growth not even half that strong in 2018, and the brand will top the 700,000-unit barrier.

With the new Impreza, Crosstrek, and the highly anticipated Ascent SUV on the way, Subaru shows no signs of slowing down. The automaker, which once sat on the fringe of the U.S. auto market, is quickly integrating itself into the mainstream.